The universe is complete. It’s all about circles, you see. That’s my new bullshit theory, on which I will now build both an alternative therapy and life-coaching courses, at astonishing prices. My proof: Uwe Boll is making a movie – 1968 Tunnel Rats – that’s not based on a videogame. And a videogame is being made of his movie! IT ALL CONNECTS!

This time Boll turns his sensitive, delicate hand to the Vietnam war. And, despite there being very few so far, the reviews aren’t too harsh. Using his familiar tunnels, 1968 Tunnel Rats follows a group of American soldiers as they fight through the claustrophobic tunnels of the Viet Cong. And fascinatingly, there was apparently no script – the film’s dialogue completely improvised by the relatively unknown cast.

And so to the first look at the game:

It looks fine really, doesn’t it? Right now I can’t figure out which developer is making it, which is odd. So it’s hard to tell you any more. I’m also not clear what it is that they don’t prepare you for, unless it’s out-of-control helicopters, which would seem an oversight in basic training. Sadly it’s very unlikely to be zombie Viet Cong hordes, as this seems a pretty straight movie from Boll. We shall see.

This is Uwe we’re talking about here, and my brain has an Uwe off-switch that ignores all instances of his movies – but this is a game, so I took notice. The game leaves me uninspired, but the engine is pretty nice. I’m betting it’s just the one Crytek used for Warhead though (I’d be very surprised if they aren’t licensing that out, yet), with a few shaders thrown in to make it look more like Uwe’s Dream.

Tunnel Rats is NOT Uwe Boll’s game. It’s a project developed by the German dev Replay Studios in Hamburg whose flagship title is currently Velvet Assassin.
According to German media Boll has a deal with them – he’s making a movie and they’re coming up with a game. Release should occur simultanously.
This whole “OMG! Boll making a game!” is just the usual Kotaku nonsense everybody seems to copy and paste nowadays…
Btw, this “news” is over a year old. Check here:http://www.pcgames.de/?article_id=607784

Yes I did.
“Life Imitates Art – Uwe Boll’s First Game”
Not his game.
“And a videogame is being made of his movie!”
Not true, game project predates Boll’s film. He even said that in several (English speaking) interviews.
“Right now I can’t figure out which developer is making it, which is odd.”
That’s why I named the developer.

Btw, Boll already did SEVERAL movies that were not based on a videogame. The first one was German Fried Movie in 1991 and the most recent is Seed from 2007.
@AbyssUK
Sorry if I offended anybody but lately it happened pretty often that the dominating English speaking news sites/blogs report on German or Russian projects without even doing the most basic research like running a native site through babelfish or something. This seems to be a common routine especially among the wannabe journalists at Kotaku so many people like to copy from.

@diebroken
It’ll hit German cinemas on the 2 October. Don’t know about the rest of the world though…
I must say the trailer is not that bad, kinda funny also if you speak German.http://www.farcry-film.de/main.html

@everybody
Yeah I liked the Vietcong tunnel levels, after the big jungle levels and the seemingly huge environments, the tunnels shocked you a little and it was easy to get disorientated. Which I can only assume is what it was really like….

“Shame there’s not much in the way of Hawaiian shirts in the Far Cry film… guess it might be really serious (lol)”

Hehe, you’re right. Although if you watch the trailer on the German site you’ll see that Jack does wear a red Hawaiian shirt at the beginning, changes it later for combat gear though.
Btw, Postal will be available as a 20 minutes longer Director’s Cut at the end of this month in German stores.
Always busy, our Uwe;-)

Since his postal movie tanked so hard, maybe he finally got the idea that nobody likes when he completely ruins the experience other players had when they played the game, by making less than 3rd rate movies that give bladder cancer to those who watch them.

I think Blood Rayne gave me an ulcer.

Honestly, I hope the movie tanks, and the game tanks harder.

In fact I think that the ENTIRE INTERNET should join together and make an AWFUL movie based off of the video game, that skips important information, has awful acting, worse effects, and absolutely 0 direction. Maybe then he will understand why he is hated so unendingly.

I’m no more uncomfortable with playing games set in Vietnam than I am those set in any other war where atrocities were committed (i.e. all of them). I think the only difference is that public opinion – and the media – swung against it so it’s easier to get all uppity about that war than it is WWII (imagine a CoD level like the AC130 one in “4”, but you’re tasked with firebombing Dresden instead).

On the other hand, I am uncomfortable with the clear bias in establishing good and evil, although I appreciate the commerical value in doing so. It’d be more creative to have me play as the Vietcong or, say, Individuals Of Middle Eastern Descent.

I’d love a game to be released with two sides, but one story like Client Eastwood did with flags of our fathers and letters from Imo Jima.. With some clever AI type thing recreating some of the attacks on yourself from yourself.. that would be awesome.

i.e.

Scene 1 – Your in a bomber above desden bombing
Scene 2 – Your a fireman in dresden saving people and avoiding bombs that you dropped in Scene 1
Scene 3 – Your in a fighter plane shooting down bombers flying back from dresden
Scene 4 – Your the bomber commander trying to get your crates back home

@Velt
Though I dislike most of his movies (thought Postal was quite funny for a B-movie…) and his “publicity stunts” in particular, yet I really don’t get this whole hate thing going on when it comes to Boll.
He’s just another bad director with a serious talent for the business part of things. And what’s this whole noise about “3rd rate movies that give bladder cancer”? He never chose a franchise that actually meant something to the “gamers”. It’s not like he “raped” Deus Ex or Zelda. Do “gamers” really care about Blood Rayne or Alone in the Dark? Seems to me even Atari doesn’t.
If I really wanted to hate somebody for bad films based on videogames I would be more pissed about somebody like Bartkowiak or the people responsible for the Super Mario Bros flick.
Imho the only problem with Postal is that it’s a film. It should have been an over the top TV mini series like South Park.

slang – The video was released last night, and as such this is news. (A video released without any information about the devs, without a dev logo, and only mentioning Boll’s production company at the start).

That you knew about the game before isn’t a reason for no one else to be told. It’s the first we’ve heard of it, and not because of Kotaku. I saw the video on Gametrailers, much as Kotaku did, and responded accordingly. I only noticed their post about it after I’d written mine.

And yes, I think most people realised Boll wasn’t coding the game. While the title of the post simplifies things, the video of the game carries Boll’s logo, and as such heavily implies his involvement. However the post makes it clear that it’s obviously not being developed by him.

I obviously ran searches of the game to find information, and could find none. There are no published press releases on press sites.

In future, please make your complaints constructive, rather than rude. I’ve no desire to be talked to like that. Thanks.

@AbyssUK: No, no, seriously, man. The tunnel levels in Vietcong were terrible levels in an otherwise very passable game. You may be right that they properly conveyed reality (which I thought the game did fairly well on the whole, in other areas). In fact, I think you are correct.

What I learn from that is: I have no desire to play a game where “crawling around in tiny tunnels and hoping not to get shot” is the primary experience. I wish somebody would just remake SEAL Team with a proper engine (i.e. not the crap engine they hand-built for Vietcong) already. Skulking through the jungles is WAY more fun than crawling through a one-or-possibly-two-path tunnel.

Replay Studios, in Hamburg, developed the game with the Viet Cong engine. They based it on my movie, and we delivered our script, screenshots et cetera to them. They also used the same composer. I controlled the production, and I’m happy with the game.

I’m assuming by ‘Viet Cong engine’ he’s referring to some proprietary tech rather than some spectacular reworking of Vietcong’s engine. I have to say I’ve got zero interest in this, but that airstrike at the end of the trailer looks fairly nifty.

@Man raised by…
Around 2006 Replay Studois started working on several projects running on the same engine. One of them was a claustrophobic FPS with a ‘nam theme. Then Boll came into this who thought that it might be interesting to turn his usual tactic around and put stuff from his script into a game project instead of just using an existing franchise as feedstock in order to save money. His “control” over the production is mainly financial because he clearly doesn’t have a clue how to produce or design a game besides the fact that he’s quite a workoholic, so putting serious effort and time into a gameproject is out of question anyway.
Presenting the game as his production is another publicity stunt. He’s quite good at these and the fans/haters love to hear such claims.

“It looks fine really, doesn’t it?”. No it doesn’t. I’ve watched the HD trailer an it looks like an at least 5-years-old Valuesoft budget title. I’m not talking about the textures or various effects you can’t see in a video, but the character movement, the animations, the way he holds the gun, all this took me back a few years, and I have too much to play at present to go that far back :).